FAILING
GRACEFULLY
Having recently retired after thirty-six years as a Mechanical
Engineer, I initially had visions of limitless golf and all the time
in the world to explore my other hobbies such as freelance writing.
Unfortunately, this preconception was naive at best!
As my wife is still working, I dutifully “volunteered”
to do housework, but drew the line at cooking, much to the relief of
those who value their health. I was not prepared, however, for the
“other” things that manifest themselves in the day-to-day
existence of a retired drone such as the graceful failure of just
about every electronic and mechanical device on the property! What is
graceful failure you may ask? Well, in essence it is an engineering
term that signifies that a mechanical or electronic device will die
with a minimum of fuss or detriment to the user. That is, it will
give sufficient notice to allow one to take the necessary steps to
avoid the total chaos that would result from the loss of use of the
device. This assumes, of course, that one is monitoring said device
for signs of incipient demise.
But have you ever counted up the vast number of devices of all
natures which we now have in and around the modern home? In our
kitchen, for example, we have a refrigerator, stove, dishwasher,
microwave oven, toaster oven, cordless phone and answering machine
plus a myriad of assorted smaller appliances such as a wall clock,
radio, food processor, electric knife, coffeemaker, coffee grinder,
etc.
Our family room is an electronic wasteland stocked with a stereo
radio/tape/CD player, speakers, TV (complete with descrambler, and
converter), VCR, clock and ecologizer. This demands the use of four
hand controllers (TV, converter, VCR and stereo) to properly make the
entertainment side of the house work adequately. I say adequately as
it is rare to find the proper controller and then remember how it
works as each has its own diabolical operational concept. They are
supposedly multi-purpose in being able to operate the other sister
entertainment devices as well, but it seems only with regard to those
features that you are absolutely not interested in! And, they use
batteries!!! Ah yes, batteries (not included of course), the bane of
civilization. Check them and they are OK; need them and they are
inevitably dead! But I digress...
Apply this search to the rest of the house and you will be
astonished with the result. And don’t forget big players like
the central vacuum cleaner, air conditioner and furnace. As can be
seen, the list is truly mind-boggling! Taken individually, their
telltale pallor and death rattle is clearly evident. But
collectively, their forecast of doom is lost in the scores of other
sights and sounds that constitute modern living. The result?
Catastrophic failures popping up at the most inconvenient times,
always geared to stretch already overworked bank accounts to the
breaking point. And as we all know, bank accounts do not fail
gracefully!
Why does this happen, especially to a “techie” such as
myself? Well folks, I have found the answer and you aren’t going
to like it. This Stephen King scenario is orchestrated by our home
computers!!! As you are all well aware, computers never fail
gracefully. There is always the feeling of “gotcha” when
the screen freezes, the mouse becomes road-kill, or you are left
staring wide-eyed at the C:\ prompt where once your intricately
crafted Christmas letter resided. No doubt it had just occurred to
you that it would be a good idea to save the information, but of
course you hadn’t quite got around to it.
Somehow the computer has organized all our labour-saving devices
into a macabre union, perhaps communicating by way of the power
outlets. This wouldn’t be much of a challenge here in
Fallingbrook where power outages occur with annoying frequency, thus
permitting alternate uses of the circuits for much of the time. This
gadget death scheme is cleverly planned to cause humans the maximum
in discomfort and despair! I also suspect that this has been spread
surreptitiously to all other homes by way of the Internet!
I must be careful as I am using the word processor to write this
and I don’t want the computer to get wind of what I xb dhnn xsk
a x df . . .
SYSTEM FAILURE - OPERATOR DELETED
RESTARTING PROGRAM - CHAOS.EXE